Joe Rogan recently had tech billionaire Marc Andreessen on his podcast. I strongly recommend you listen to the entire episode. Andreessen discusses at length what the government is doing to us by manipulating business and industry. Here’s a transcript of a short excerpt starting at 2:49:40.
Marc Andreessen: “There used to be this thing I called ‘The Deal’ – with a capital ‘D,’ and The Deal was, you could be – and this is what I was – you could be a tech founder, or you could start a private company, or you could create a tech product. Everybody loved you, it was great, glowing press coverage, the whole thing. You take the company public, it employs a lot of people, it creates a lot of jobs, you make a lot of money. At some point you cash out and you donate all the money to charity and everybody thinks you’re a hero. Right? And it’s just great.”
Joe Rogan: (Laughing) “Right!”
MA: “This is how it ran for a very long time. And this was The Deal and Clinton and Gore, 100% support of that, and they were 100% pro-Capitalism in this way and 100% pro-Tech. And they actually did a lot to foster this kind of enviroment. And basically what happened is the last fifteen years or so of Democrats, culminating in this administration broke every part of that deal for people in my world. Every single part of that was shattered, right? Where just like technology became presumptively evil, and if you were a business person you were presumptively a bad person, and technology had presumptively bad effects, and dot dot dot. And then they were going to regulate you and kill you and quash you, and then the kicker was, philanthropy became evil.
“And this is a real culture change in the last five years that I hope will reverse now, which is philanthropy now is a dirty word on the Left because it’s the private person choosing to give away the money as opposed to the government choosing the way to give the money.”
JR: “Oooh.”
MA: “So I’ll give you the ultimate case. Here’s where I radicalized on this topic. So you’ll recall some years back Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla, they have a ton of money in Facebook stock, they created a non-profit entity called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which the original mission was to literally cure all disease. And this could be like $200 billion to cure all disease, right? Big deal. They committed to donate 99% of their assets to this new foundation.
“They got brutally attacked from the Left, and the attack was ‘They’re only doing it to save on taxes.’
“Now, basic mathematics (laughing) you don’t give away 99% of your money…”
JR and MA: “…to save money on taxes.”
MA: “Right? But it was a vicious attack. A very, very aggressive attack. And the fundamental reason for the attack was, ‘How dare they treat that money like its their own? How dare they decide where it goes?’ Instead tax rates for billionaires should go to 90-something percent, the government should take the money, the government should allocate it, and that would be the morally proper and correct thing to do.”
JR: “What do you think is the root of that kind of thinking?”
MA: “Utopian… This is utopian collectivism. You know, it’s…”
JR: “Socialism that works.”
MA: “Socialism, yeah. The core idea is socialism. The core idea is this sort of radical egalitarianism. ‘Everybody should be exactly the same, all outcomes should be exactly the same, everything should be completely fair at all times.'”
JR: “At some root of it has to be in envy.”
MA: “Yeah, of course. Envy, resentment. Neitzche had this great term he called ‘ressentiment.’ It’s like turbocharged resentment, and so the way he described it was ressentiment is envy, resentment and bitterness that is so intense that it causes an inversion of values.”
JR: “Ooooh.”
MA: “And the things that used to be good become bad, and the things that used to be bad become good.”
JR: “Philanthropy becomes bad.”
MA: “Philanthropy becomes bad because it should be the State operating on behalf of the people as a whole who are handing out the money, not the individual.”
JR: “I was not aware of that blowback. I would have loved to read some of those comments. (Laughing) I would like to go to their page and see what else the commented on.”
MA: “I’ll give you another example. Here’s another radicalizing moment. So my friend Sheryl Sandberg who I worked with very closely for a long time at Facebook, and by the way, Democrat, Liberal, by the way endorsed Kamala, like very much not on the same page as me on these things – she actually worked in the Clinton administration, dyed in the wool Democrat – she wrote this book called ‘Lean In’ about twelve years ago. It’s this sort of Feminist Manifesto. And the thesis of ‘Lean In’ was that women in their lives and careers could ‘lean in’ – she said that what she observed in a lot of meetings was that men were leaning in to the table and sitting at the front while women were like leaning back and waiting to be called on. She said that women should lean in. It became a metaphor for her for women should like lean in on their careers, they should aggressively advocate for themselves to get raises and promotions…”
JR: “Like men do.”
MA: “Like men do. They should basically, women should basically become more aggressive in the workplace and then, therefore, perform better. It was a manifesto to women saying ‘Be more confident, be more assertive, be more aggressive, be more successful.’
“I read the draft of the book when she was writing it and I said ‘You realize you’ve written a right-wing manifesto?’ She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, because she’s a life-long Lefty, and she says ‘What do you mean?’ I’m like, you, this book is a statement that women have agency. This book is a statement that the things that women choose to do will lead to better results. But that’s what people believe on the Right. On the Left the people believe that women are only, always and ever victims, and if a woman doesn’t succeed in a career it’s because she’s being discriminated against. So I predicted that when this book comes out Right-wingers are going to think it’s great, and you’re going to get a t-, like the Left is going to come at you, ’cause you’re violating the fundamental principle of the Left which is ‘Anybody who does less well is a victim.’
“In that case that’s exactly what happened. By the way, the reviews were all by women, and they tore into her. In every major publication they completely ripped her. They were like ‘How dare this rich, entitled woman be telling us, telling women that they’re not victims and that they have all this agency. This is denial of sexism, denial of oppression.”